Art along the way….

Tag Archives: French New Wave

You may have already heard about or seen the documentary, Faces, Places (Visages, Villages) as it’s getting some positive press these days. The Atlantic called it a one-in-a-million crowd-pleaser that deserves to be seen by the widest audience possible.

Agnès Varda and JR (IMDb.com image)

It’s a quirky, charming film about two artists, Agnès Varda, and JR, who work together to create some art. Click here to watch the official trailer.

Faces, Places documents some lovely moments. There are images in it that will stay with me for a long time. In an unassuming, non-didactic manner, it shows the power of good art. It is a film that affirms the importance of beauty in our lives……and that we are surrounded by that beauty in the landscape and in others.

Agnès Varda is an intriguing person. Faces, Places only hints at her background; the documentary is the story of the colloboration between Varda and JR. She’s been making films since the 1950’s. She was one of the lesser known, but, perhaps, most groundbreaking of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) filmmakers. She met Jean-Luc Godard (the more famous of the New Wave directors) at a film festival in 1958. He was working as a film critic, and she had two films in the festival. It’s worth reading this short review of Faces, Places in the New Yorker for a bit of history, and Richard Brody’s opinion on the differences between Varda and Godard’s films.

I’m looking forward to watching more of her films. There are 52 films listed on her Filmography….lots of choices for the winter evenings ahead.